In Serena's Web

by Kay Hooper

  “Which were?”

  “First and foremost was the fact that Stuart was perfectly content to let you run your own life. He’s no fool, which meant that neither were you. That, plus your degree and your involvement with foundations and the like, added up to more than a brilliant mind. It added up to brilliance, yes, but also common sense, logic, and a knack for organization.”

  “I see.”

  “Yes. And since I’d seen ample evidence of it, I also knew that you controlled what you could, when you could. Another point: You had an uncanny knack for understanding people, which springs from genuine interest and genuine compassion.”

  “Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome. At that point I started arranging your layers in my mind. Don’t laugh!”

  “It sounds funny. Sorry. You were saying?”

  “Layers. I started with the surface, which was simple. Tranquility. Whoever named you, by the way, performed a master stroke and perpetrated a huge joke on mankind.”

  “I’ll tell Daddy you think so.”

  “I’ll tell him myself. Along with a few other things.” He cleared his throat. “You were tranquil, serene. Under that was your interest in people, and your understanding of them. Compassion. A willingness to help, whatever the cost to yourself. If you had it to give, you gave. If you didn’t have what was needed, you found someone who did.”

  “Am I being canonized?”

  “The worst is yet to come.”

  “I was afraid of that.”

  Brian kissed her, then cleared his throat again. “Under the compassion was something more complex. Your tendency to plot. It was as natural for you to take the devious way as it was for the Borgias to poison dinner guests.”

  Her expression was pensive as she said mildly, “I don’t like the comparison.”

  “I call ’em as I see ’em.”

  Serena stared at him. “The next time I have you at my mercy, you’re going to regret saying that.”

  “Consider me warned.” He swallowed a laugh. “Where was I? Oh, yes. Your plotting. Entirely natural. And, coupled with the layer under it, your need to control, it makes for a truly frightening combination. With absolutely no malice, you very gently went about arranging things to suit you. People, as well as situations. The more tangled a situation became, the more you enjoyed it.” He lifted a brow at her. “No comment?”

  “I’m waiting to find out what my basic trait is,” she said politely.

  “Bear with me. Under the control, I decided on a layer of vulnerability. You are vulnerable, you know.”

  “I was beginning to wonder.”

  “I’m not surprised. But you do have that layer. However, under that is your basic trait. The trait that, in effect, influences every other trait. The strong, basic core of your personality.”

  “I’m afraid to ask.” But she wasn’t, because she knew that he understood her now.

  Brian smiled very tenderly. “You can’t bear to lose.”

  Serena returned his smile. “When I was six, Daddy explained about graciousness in the face of defeat. I didn’t get it. I never have.”

  He laughed. “It was the only thing that made sense. And after that everything else fell into place. There was never one plot, there was a series of plots. All woven into a web I couldn’t have escaped from no matter what I did.” He sighed. “Once you’d made up your mind to catch me, you never gave up. Every step in every plan was based on that single determination. I nearly had it figured out this morning in the garden. I’d realized you were still plotting, but I hadn’t realized what drove you.”

  “And I caught you,” she murmured.

  “You’re a devious woman,” he told her sternly.

  “Yes, but compassionate,” she reminded him. “And I didn’t force you to the altar, after all. I just created a situation that forced you to think about what you really wanted. The final decision was always yours, darling.”

  Brian stared at her for a moment, then said in a very calm tone, “We’re going to rewrite the vows, darling, because you’re going to promise never to involve me in another of your plots without my prior knowledge and consent.”

  Serena smiled.

  And, realizing what he’d just said, Brian smiled too. “No, you won’t have to promise.”

  “You’ll always know what I’m plotting,” she agreed softly. “You’ll be my best friend. No secrets. No tricks.”

  He surrounded her face in his warm hands. “I love you, Serena.”

  “And I love you.” Her smile was tender, glowing. True to her nature, she immediately added, “Can we call room service? I’m starving.”

  A long time later, after room service had come and gone, and the ravages of Serena’s day had been repaired, Brian watched his love take the phone off the hook.

  “Why?” he asked curiously.

  “Oh, because we don’t want to be disturbed. Do we?”

  Brian pulled her over on top of him. “No. But what makes you think we would be?”

  “Call it a hunch.”

  “Why do I get the feeling one of your hunches might as well be considered an ironclad certainty?”

  “I can’t imagine.”

  Brian let it pass. “Tell me something.” He smiled up at her. “That little scene in the garden this morning. If I had said it was over, if I’d walked away and said it was for good, what would you have done?”

  “I would have …” Serena smiled very gently. “Thought of something.”

  He stared at her for a long moment, then began to laugh. “Oh, boy, what’ve I let myself in for?”

  “Love.” Serena laughed. “And me too. Because, darling, even when you didn’t know you loved me, I’ve never felt so loved in my life.”

  Brian drew her head down, his green eyes darkening. “And I’ve never felt so tangled … in such a loving web.”

  • • •

  When the operator reported the phone’s being off the hook, Josh wasn’t surprised. He thanked her and broke the connection. Then, after a moment’s thought, he dialed a familiar number.

  Stuart would already know, of course. He was psychic where Serena was concerned. He’d probably already chosen the wedding gift. Listening to the phone ring, Josh wondered idly about that blond pianist.

  Could she be a brunette?

  Solemnly he cursed Serena for her innocent comment.

  Read on for

  a special preview of the

  third thrilling novel in

  Kay Hooper’s Blood trilogy…

  BLOOD TIES

  Coming from Bantam

  in Spring 2010

  BLOOD TIES

  On Sale Spring 2010

  PROLOGUE

  Six months previously:

  October

  Listen.

  “No.”

  Listen.

  “I don’t want to hear.” She kept her eyes down, staring at her bare feet. Her toenails were painted pink. Only not here. Here, they were gray, like everything else.

  Everything except the blood. The blood was always red.

  She had forgotten that.

  You have to listen to us.

  “No, I don’t. Not anymore.”

  We can help you.

  “No one can help me. Not to do that, what you’re asking me to do. It’s impossible.” At the edge of her vision, she saw the blood creeping toward her, and immediately took a step backward. Then another. “I can’t go back now. I can never go back.”

  Yes. You can. You have to.

  “I was at peace. Why didn’t you leave me there?” She felt something solid and hard against her back and pressed herself against it, her gaze still on her toes, so much of her awareness on the blood inching ever closer.

  Because it isn’t finished.

  “It was finished a long time ago.”

  Not for you. Not for her.

  ONE

  Present day:

  April 8

  Tennessee

  Case Edgerton ran
along the narrow trail, aware of his burning legs but concentrating on his breathing. The last mile was always the hardest, especially on his weekly trail run. Easier to just zone out and run when he was on the track or in his neighborhood park; this kind of running, with its uneven terrain and various hazards, required real concentration.

  That was why he liked it.

  He jumped over a rotted fallen log, and almost immediately had to duck a low-hanging branch. After that, it was all downhill—which wasn’t as easy as it sounded, since the trail snaked back and forth in hairpin curves all along the middle quarter of this last mile. Good training for his upcoming race. He planned to win that one, as he had won so many his entire senior year.

  And then Kayla Vassey, who had a thing for runners and who was remarkably flexible, would happily reward him. Maybe for the whole summer. But there’d be no clinging to him afterward; she’d be too busy sizing up next year’s crop of runners to do more than wave goodbye when he left for college in the fall.

  Sex without strings. The kind he preferred.

  Case nearly tripped over a root exposed by recent spring rains, and swore at his wandering thoughts.

  Concentrate, idiot. Do you want to lose that race?

  He really didn’t.

  His legs were on fire now and his lungs felt raw, but he kept pushing himself, as he always did, even picking up a little speed as he rounded the last of the wicked hairpin curves.

  This time, when he tripped, he went sprawling.

  He tried to land on his shoulder and roll, to do as little damage as possible, but the trail was so uneven that instead of rolling he slammed into the hard ground with a grunt, the wind knocked out of him, and a jolt of pain told him he’d probably jammed or torn something.

  It took him a few minutes of panting and holding his shoulder gingerly before he felt able to sit up. And it was only then that he saw what had tripped him.

  An arm.

  Incredulous, he stared at a hand that appeared to belong to a man, a hand that was surprisingly clean and unmarked, long fingers seemingly relaxed. His gaze tracked across a forearm that was likewise uninjured, and then—

  And then Case Edgerton began to scream like a little girl.

  “You can see why I called you in.” Sheriff Desmond Duncan’s voice was not—quite—defensive. “Since this is outside the town limits of Serenade, it falls into my jurisdiction. And I’m not ashamed to admit it’s beyond anything the Pageant County Sheriff’s Department has ever handled.” He paused, then repeated, “Ever.”

  “I’m not surprised,” she replied somewhat absently.

  His training and experience told Des Duncan to shut up and let her concentrate on the scene, but his curiosity was stronger. He hadn’t known what to expect when he had contacted the FBI, never having done so before; maybe any agent would have surprised him. This one definitely did.

  She was drop-dead gorgeous, for one thing, with a centerfold body and the face of an exotic angel. And she possessed the most vivid blue eyes Duncan had ever seen in his life. With all that, she appeared remarkably casual and unaware of the effect she was having on just about every man within eyesight of her. She was in faded jeans and a loose pullover sweater, and her boots were both serviceable and worn. Her long gleaming black hair was pulled back into a low ponytail at the nape of her neck.

  She had done everything short of take a mud bath to downplay her looks, and Des still had to fight a tendency to stutter a bit when speaking to her. He wasn’t even sure she had shown him a badge.

  And he was nearly sixty, for Christ’s sake.

  Wary of asking the wrong question or asking one the wrong way, he said tentatively, “I’m grateful to turn this over to more experienced hands, believe me. I naturally called the State Bureau of Investigation first, but … Well, once they heard me out, they suggested I call in your office. Yours specifically, not just the FBI. Sort of surprised me, to be honest. That they suggested right off the bat I should call you folks. But it sounded like a good idea to me, so I did. Didn’t really expect so many feds to respond, and I sure as hell didn’t expect it to be so fast. I sent in the request less than five hours ago.”

  “We were in the area,” she said. “Near enough. Just over the mountains in North Carolina.”

  “Another case?”

  “Ongoing, though at the moment mostly inactive.”

  Duncan nodded even though she wasn’t looking at him. She was on one knee a couple of feet from the body—what was left of the body—her gaze fixed unwaveringly on it.

  He wondered what she saw. Because, word had it, the agents of the FBI’s elite Special Crimes Unit saw a lot more than most cops.

  What Duncan saw was plain enough, if incredibly bizarre, and he had to force himself to look again.

  The body lay sprawled beside what was, among the high-school track team and some of the hardier souls in town, a popular hiking and running trail. It was a wickedly difficult path to walk at a brisk pace, let alone run, which made it an excellent training course if you knew what you were doing—and potentially deadly if you didn’t.

  There were numerous cases of sprains, strains, and broken bones in this area all year round, but especially after the spring rains.

  Still, Duncan didn’t have to be an M.E. or even a doctor to know that a fall while running or walking hadn’t done this. Not this.

  The dense undergrowth of this part of the forest had done a fair job of concealing most of the body; Duncan’s deputies had been forced hours before to carefully clear away bushes and vines just to have access to the remains.

  Which made it a damned good thing that this was obviously a dump site rather than a murder scene; Duncan might not have been familiar with grisly murders, but he certainly knew enough to be sure the feds would not have been happy to find their evidence disturbed.

  Evidence. He wondered if there was any to speak of. His own people certainly hadn’t found much. Prints were being run through IAFIS now, and if that avenue of identification turned up no name, Duncan supposed the next step would be dental records.

  Because there wasn’t a whole lot else to identify the poor bastard with.

  His left arm lay across part of the trail, and it was eerily undamaged, even unmarked by so much as a bruise. Eerily because from the elbow on the damage was … extreme. Most of the flesh and muscle had been somehow stripped from the bones, leaving behind only bloody tags of sinew attached here and there. Most if not all of the internal organs were gone, including the eyes, and the scalp had been ripped from the skull.

  Ripped. Jesus, what could have ripped it? What could have done this?

  “Any ideas what could have done this?” Duncan asked.

  “No sane ones,” she replied in a matter-of-fact tone.

  “So I’m not the only one imagining nightmare impossibilities?” He could hear the relief in his own voice.

  She turned her head and looked at him, then rose easily from her kneeling position and stepped away from the remains to join him. “We learned a long time ago not to throw around words like ‘impossible.’”

  “And ‘nightmare’?”

  “That one too. ‘There are stranger things in heaven and earth, Horatio …’” Special Agent Miranda Bishop shrugged. “The SCU was created to deal with those stranger things. We’ve seen a lot of them.”

  “So I’ve heard, Agent Bishop.”

  She smiled, and he was aware yet again of an entirely unprofessional and entirely masculine response to truly breathtaking beauty.

  “Miranda, please. Otherwise it’ll get confusing.”

  “Oh? Why is that?”

  “Because,” a new voice chimed in, “you’re likely to hear all of us referring to Bishop, and when we do we’re talking about Noah Bishop, the chief of the Special Crimes Unit.”

  “My husband,” Miranda Bishop clarified. “Everybody calls him Bishop. So please do call me Miranda.” She waited for his nod, then turned her electric-blue-eyed gaze to the other agent. “Quent
in, anything?”

  “Not so you’d notice.” Special Agent Quentin Hayes shook his head, then frowned and pulled a twig from his rather shaggy blond hair. “Though I’ve seldom searched an area with undergrowth this dense, so I can’t say I couldn’t have missed something.”

  Duncan spoke up to say, “Our county medical examiner has only had to deal with accidental deaths since he got the job, but he said he was sure this man wasn’t killed here.”

  Miranda Bishop nodded. “Your M.E. is right. If the victim had been killed here, the ground would be soaked with blood—at the very least. This man was probably alive twenty-four hours ago, and dumped here sometime around dawn today.”

  Duncan didn’t ask how she’d arrived at that conclusion; his M.E. had made the same guesstimate.

  “No signs of a struggle,” Quentin added. “And unless this guy was drugged or otherwise unconscious or dead, I would imagine he struggled.”

  With a grimace, Duncan said, “Personally, I’m hoping he was already dead when … that … was done to him.”

  “We’re all hoping the same thing,” Quentin assured him. “In the meantime, knowing who the victim was would at least give us a place to start. Any word on the prints your people took?”

  “When I checked in an hour ago, no. I’ll go back to my Jeep and check again; like I told you, cell service is lousy up here, and our portable radios are next to useless. We have to use a specially designed booster antenna on our police vehicles to get any kind of signal at all, and even that tends to be spotty.”

  “Appreciate it, Sheriff.” Quentin watched the older man cautiously make his way down the steep trail toward the road and their cars, then turned his head and looked at Miranda with lifted brows.

  “I don’t know,” she said.

  Quentin lowered his voice even though the nearest sheriff’s deputies were yards away. “The M.O. is close. Torture on the inhuman side of brutal.”